


In Our Family Portrait

by MadameReveuse



Category: Paradise Lost - John Milton
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings, being the devil and all that entails, enjoy, it's a fic about lucifer and his brothers, paradise lost fic but also just in general, so this is basically... - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 13:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17788298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameReveuse/pseuds/MadameReveuse
Summary: The archangels look at Lucifer, and don't recognize him anymore. Their brother is dead, leaving only Satan behind.





	1. Gabriel

**Author's Note:**

> op is a devil worshipper confirmed???? x-files theme starts playin
> 
> so basically i noticed that i hadn't posted anything on here since september of last year, so i decided to transfer these little stories from my tumblr. i'll even throw in a surprise epilogue! anything's better than working on my thesis, eh?? eh???
> 
> feedback appreciated! comments and kudos make my whole week :)

_Lucifer, their brother, used to be the most glorious of angels, most perfect in his beauty, most favored by the father, his aura illuminating any place he went. It was not the warm, all-encompassing light of the father’s love, so pleasant for angels to bask in, but the cool, white light of the stars, the brightness in the dark of outer space. Did they not call him the Morningstar, the child of dusk and dawn? Gabriel remembers that ageless, beloved face alight with that glow, his luminous eyes, his splendid smile._

The Apostate’s face, when he appears in the garden, is thus changed by the fall that Gabriel barely knows it’s him. He recognizes his former brother by the way he _walks_. (still like his feet are only touching the ground because he wills it so.) It is still the same face, underneath it all, though marred by an unsightly scowl, and yet not: a nameless anguish nestles underneath his eyes, worry and loss have creased lines into his formerly pure, radiant skin. His aura is diluted, his light eclipsed by a blackness at the heart of him. Gabriel shudders.

“Attend,” he tells his guard and they manifest their weapons. “By his bearing, it is the Lord of Hell.”

“Gavri-el, do you not recognize me?” says the Apostate. His voice is the same, though tinged by a strange bitterness. It’s disconcerting. “You called me brother not too long ago.”

There is something frozen in the eyes of the traitor-angel, something that dulled or died or vanished with the grace of the Lord. There is no grace discernable in him now. Gabriel used to read in his brother’s eyes as in the scripture, but he cannot anymore. Who knows what this being thinks? Who knows what this being is? Seeing an angel without its grace, it’s horrifying, like seeing an angel with its wings or limbs or beating heart torn out. No one has ever beheld anything like it before. What now is this creature that once was their brother, roaming in the pristine garden as if he had a right to, as if he were not an abomination, tainting everything else he touches?

“I call you adversary,” Gabriel says, gripping the hilt of his sword tight. “I know not who you are. Your name has been expunged from the books of heaven, and none of the faithful host may use it now. Leave this garden, Satan, you have no business here.”

For a moment, the Apostate flinches, grief flashing through his eyes, Gabriel holds a breath his ethereal body does not need - _(my brother, my brother, oh how weary, how dreadful, can something not be done? oh father please)_ \- then the haughty sneer returns, the Adversary seeming to will it into place by force of stubborn pride alone.

“Satan?” he echoes. “I’ll have to decide whether or not i like the sound of that new name. But I roam freely now in whichever realm I please, and not ask leave of you or any other. My business is my own. Leave me be or try to move me hence.” His spear appears in his hand as he speaks, darker now than the holy weapon it used to be and stygian, like him.

Gabriel draws his sword. 

“Return to your dungeon, Satan, or I’ll drag you there in chains.”

He will grieve later for his fallen brother whose name he’s not allowed to utter anymore.


	2. Uriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we're going to hell in this one. yup! straight to the pit!  
> uriel is the hardest archangel to pin down, not even so much for lack of information, but bc the first time i read about him was in a good omens fic that has completely influenced my perception of him.

_Lucifer, their brother, used to love to fly, higher than any other angel dared to reach. As well, he used to love to sit and ponder the deep secrets entrusted to him, as the eldest, by the Father. He used to love walking among the fragrant groves of heaven, soon getting caught up in contemplation over a particularly well-sculpted blossom growing along the wayside, or a particularly pleasing view of the evening sky in all its colors, for Lucifer used to love to look at pretty things.  
_

_Besides that, Lucifer used to love his fellow angels._

Once, only once, the Lord attempts to extend the olive branch due Hell. 

He sends Uriel, with a guard of two more. No angel has ever entered Hell before. Why would any angel want to? On Earth, meanwhile, humans have spread across the globe; the Father’s chosen are just now embarked upon their desert voyage. Uriel can see already that it will be an arduous crossing. He knows, also, that Lu– that the Adversary’s people have been busy, ensnaring the humans with all manners of wiles, tempting them into idolatry, into sin. It is merciful of the Father to still offer peace, considering that.

The cast-iron gates of Hell are large enough that a whole host could pass, and as intimidating as one would imagine the gates of Hell to be. They were originally put in place by the Father himself, but since then, something has changed: atop the gate, in badly butchered Enochian, someone has placed an inscription. When Uriel at last deciphers it, it reads ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

Seemingly belying that grim portent, they get in without problem. Hell is worse than Uriel could ever have imagined. It is a barren waste, barely made habitable by those forced to dwell here, the darkness oppressive, the omnipresent flames not so much shedding light as making the darkness sootier. The infamous seven rings loom in the distance, the giant monolith that is the Pandemonium amidst it all. This is a godless place. Here Uriel, for the first time in his life, cannot feel the presence of the Lord, which unsettles him, but with his finely tuned senses, he picks up other emanations from the place and its inhabitants. There are strong emotions here, spite and defiance and yes, also grief, and something else that is so foreign that he cannot place it, but this new emotion, whatever it is, seems to rule and encompass the whole place.

Beyond the gate there’s a demon standing guard, and Uriel is too late to prevent one of his companions drawing upon the guardian. Jophiel grabs the demon by the scruff of the neck, motivated by the instinctive disgust that any angel feels when looking upon a fallen one, and manifests their flaming sword, ready to smite–

Before Uriel can do anything to separate the fighters, they are interrupted by a mighty wingbeat from above them. Some outlandish, three-pronged weapon bats Jophiel right in their chest and sends them flying to collide gracelessly with the gate.

“Who dares pass here,” says the devil (it is half a growl), “and attack my family?”

_Family!_ u´Uriel’s heart soars. Out of the archangels, he is the youngest, and though he never brings it up at home, he misses the guidance of his eldest brother fiercely. Even now that he’s so changed and he’s the devil, a part of Uriel wants to throw his arms around he-who-was-once-Lucifer, horns and all, and bury his face in the down of his brother’s wing, even ash-stained as it is, like he used to do when they were just freshly made.

“I am unharmed,” he chirps. “I came to–”

“Shut yon mouth,” the devil says, waving his bizarre three-pronged spear in Uriel’s direction. He’s already turning away towards the demon, touching him with a gentleness that surprises the angels present. He’s checking for injuries. “Belial, are you alright? Are you not hurt?”

“Nothing wounded but my pride,” the demon states, staggering to his feet. Lucifer gives him a hand up.

As this is happening, there is the rushing sound of many more wings overhead. A whole band of demons is congregating around them, it seems like all of Lucifer’s absurd court of arch-demons is assembling. A few, former cherubim and seraphim by the looks of them, come close, positioning themselves between Lucifer and Uriel in an almost protective way.

“Now what brings three angels to the gates of hell?” Satan demands. “Talk quickly, or we might decide to force your tongues.”

Uriel flinches. This, he is forced to recall, is not the elder brother he remembers. His brother would ruffle his hair and offer to help preen his wings. This being has just threatened to torture him. He takes a thorough look at this creature, the devil. He is dressed in such dark fabrics as no angel would wear; pale gold adorns his fingers richly, as even his earlobes (ouch, Uriel thinks) and the tips of his elegantly curved horns. In the eyes of the devil there is a cruel detachment now that leaves Uriel startled. No warmth remains there for his little brother, no trace of a hint that they once meant something to each other. 

“We did not come to fight,” Uriel says, but he is fighting: to suppress the tremor in his voice. “We are sent by the Almighty to offer you pardon…”

Some demons start hissing. The devil laughs. “We seem to be witnessing the onset of senility in our father,” he says to his audience, who drink in his words. “Forgiveness is not asked for nor provided. Such were the terms of the arrangement, were they not?”

Uriel does not know what arrangement is being referred to. “You could come home,” he says. “You may arise, said our Father, from this dismal waste and rejoin the faithful. You may rest, in renewed glory in the Heavens…”

Lucifer interrupts him with a rude, not at all angelic sound. “And is this not glory enough?” He gestures grandiosely at the Pandemonium behind him. “Here we have made a home by our own hands. Certainly, it may be dark, it may be a bit filled with fire. But it is ours! Have we not tamed this Hell to make life comfortable here? Are we not free, here, to be who we are, feel what we feel, pursue whichever paths we wish?”

“Hear, hear!” shouts a demon. “Hail Lucifer!” another. Some take up the cry, and for one horrifying, inconceivable moment, Uriel feels envy that these wretched beings may bandy about his brother’s name when he may not. A demon, once a cherub, puts a hand on Lucifer’s shoulder and Uriel gasps, because a cherub putting hands on an archangel unprompted is something unheard of in heaven, but Lucifer smiles (he has smiles for this demon, but not for his brother standing here scorned) and loops an arm around the lesser Fallen, leaning in to bump their horns together. It is a gesture that denotes camaraderie, (unique to these beings, to Hell) and perhaps even love.

_Love_ , Uriel thinks. He always assumed that the Fallen had all lost it along with the Lord’s grace. But now he realizes that it has been here all along, that this is the strange new emotion emanating from this place and from everyone here, from within their warped, dark auras. It is not founded in the Lord (unlike anything Uriel has ever felt in Heaven) but comes from within themselves. It is the kind of fierce, fire-forged love of people defeated, crushed and beaten to the ground and left to rot, who nonetheless, at the lowest point that anyone can sink to, pulled each other up off the ground. Of people who found a dungeon and made it an empire, and more important yet, a hearth and home. Pandemonium. Place of all demons.

This dismal, fiery pit is loved, these demons are loved. By each other. By Lucifer. The only people not loved here are the three angels, thoughtlessly intruding.

“You can tell our father, Uriel,” says Lucifer in a softer tone, “that he who once was his son remembers. And also… what else… ah yes, that henceforth any incursion of angelic forces into Hell without our consent will be considered an act of war and penalized with death.”

Uriel gasps.

“No matter who the angels in question might be.”

Uriel feels his eyes water. It’s only partially the sulphur in the air. “I offer you an honest peace,” he says. “And this is how i am received?”

Lucifer absentmindedly twists a strand of his hair around his index finger, the one that always used to fall into his face (the familiarity leaves Uriel with a sting in his chest), then reaches up and wraps that strand around his horn. That’s new. “Any such offer at this point could really only be a deception.”

Uriel bristles. He knows the Father does not deceive. He has faith. “How can i convince you?”

“There is one way.” The devil grins like a rusted blade. “Call me by my proper name.”

At this point, Uriel is simply letting the tears fall. He shakes his head. “I cannot,” he says timidly, “although I wish I may.”

The devil’s eyes narrow into angry slits. “Then be gone,” he spits. “And let it be known that any angel approaching my home and my family again will have to pay the price.”

Uriel wipes his eyes. “Your family? That’s Michael and Raphael and Gabriel and I. Not this rabble here.”

The spear returns to Lucifer’s hand. It is still the same weapon, Uriel observes detachedly, but it somehow gained two more prongs since the rebellion. It now glows in a blood-red light. Lucifer brings up his arm, but the former cherub stays him, putting a hand on his chest. “Do not do anything you might regret, _helel_.”

“Don’t let go of me, Beel,” Lucifer says through gritted teeth. “I might yet kill him where he stands.” A few demons draw closer, hissing, their eyes hunger-bright in the gloom. Uriel draws his sword, and the way the demons wince at it is the only thing that saves him and his guard. Even Lucifer recoils. They remember all too well the way this narrow blade cut into them with surgical precision to rival Raphael’s, how it passed skin and bone like nothing to reach that small but important bit of them within their chests and sever it. He took the Lord’s grace from them all that day, as Michael held them down, before they were tossed from the battlements like so much garbage.

As he flees, Uriel cannot help but wonder why the Lord would send him down here in the first place. To quieten his grief? To show him that his brother is no more, has been replaced by the devil? That Lucifer has made himself a new family here, and doesn’t need him anymore? O _h Father,_ Uriel thinks, _your lessons can be cruel._


	3. Michael

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> okay so gabriel is like,, sad but trying his best, okay? and uriel is all "i am a smol owo bean and want my brother back"? but michael?  
> Michael's Fucking Pissed.

_Lucifer, their brother, is dead and gone._

Michael knows this. There is no changing things, there is nothing they might have done differently at any point in time, there is no one left to save. Lucifer, eldest of the archangels, died on that first battlefield. The creature roaming the earth wearing his body and his name is nothing but a dreadful revenant, poisoning the world, that must be snuffed out. This is Michael’s job.

He does not know what that being thinks. He never gets to ask. Whenever they encounter each other, usually the blades clash on sight. Sometimes, when no one bothers to manifest a weapon, it’s just fists (and feet and nails and wings and so much rage and _teeth_ \- devil’s a biter.)

What Michael does know is that ever since the rebellion, Father has been absent, preferring to speak through the Metatron to walking with his angels as he once did. That Gabriel will not bear the topic of Hell and its denizens ever being brought up in any way, that he will excuse himself to restless flight for hours on end. That Uriel, ever since he returned from that mission to the Pit, has become detached in a way that alarms Michael deeply, spending all his time in communion with an increasingly silent God. That Raphael works himself to weariness trying to fix them, to bring this family back to the state of bliss that it once enjoyed, but that he can’t. Michael wishes he knew what to do, that there was anything he could do to repair them and restore their happiness, but there doesn’t seem to be. Lucifer tore a hole into the family when he chose to rebel, and for that, Michael can do naught but hate him.

That Michael feels hatred at all is Lucifer’s fault. This, and other base emotions, were foreign to the angels before the war. Every frown-line on Gabriel’s face, every sigh from Raphael’s lips, every tear from Uriel’s eyes, it is all Lucifer’s fault, and Michael seethes. 

He is the Sword of God. His calling is to smite evil. If he smites a little too hard when he encounters evil, who may blame him?

The centuries pass by and he has fought the devil in the desert. He has fought the devil standing knee-deep in snow, in midair, in forests, amidst sprawling human settlements. He has fought the devil for myriads of different reasons, on myriads of battlefields. He has lost count of how many times his greatsword has clashed with Satan’s thrice-damned, stupid pitchfork. _(Really, Lucy, a trident? You know the humans will make fun of you, right?)_

Michael trains hard, spends every free moment steeling himself for a final, glorious triumph, but they remain fairly evenly matched. Sometimes he wins the day, sometimes the devil does. In any case, more often than not, Michael ends up limping home with wounds for Raphael to sigh and cluck over. 

Michael has triumphed once before, in that very first battle. He struck the first blow to wound the arch-fiend, introducing the Apostates to the concept of pain. He was the one to cast the devil down from atop Heaven’s mighty wall into his dungeon. And yet, even this victory has lost its sweetness.

Because on the other hand, he stabbed his brother with a big sword. The first blood in Heaven was shed by his hand, not the fiend’s. He tossed his brother off a big wall and he hit the ground and is now the devil. Michael doesn’t like to sleep anymore because once he closes his eyes, without fail, in his dreams he will revisit the moment Lucifer fell or, as it were, the moment Michael let go of him. The expression on his face, not even anger, not even fear, but a sort of wide-eyed, mute astonishment.

Oh, he had screamed. Earlier. Struggling in Michael’s grasp as Uriel unsheathed his blade and cut him off from grace. Screaming and weeping (but by the time he’d dragged him by the hair atop the parapet, he had apparently screamed himself out) and it echoes in Michael’s head since and will not cease. He and Uriel did the same thing to the other Fallen, on that dreadful day, the whole defeated host of them but now, in retrospect, after Lucifer they all blur together, which is a horror of its own. (but it was _right_ \- it was the right thing to do, the _good_ thing, the thing the Father ordered. So why does it feel bad at all?)

_His own fault,_ Michael reminds himself as he spots another notch in his sword from the latest fight. As he lies awake at night. As he watches his brothers grow hard and cold and distant, the easy, steadfast bond between them dwindling. A _ll his fault. He could have backed down. He could have chosen not to rebel._

_Why, why did he do it? What could possibly be so important to him as to excuse all of this?_

Michael banishes these questions from his mind as he finds himself on the business end of that _bloody pitchfork_ again. They meet over the fate of some special human Michael’s tasked to protect, or over a smiting of some lesser demon (the devil seems to have this weird aversion to losing soldiers - he doesn’t like his demons being smitten) or simply because the planet only has a limited number of places in it and two immortal beings who travel all over are bound to meet each other sometimes. The reasons are another thing that just blurs with time.

“How fare you, Mika’il?” the devil asks him once, grinning and panting and clutching his side, dark ichor seeping out from beneath his fingers. “Heaven still the same?”

“No.” _Not since you left._ “I will not be goaded into conversation with you, Satan.”

“Oh?” the devil asks. “Is it because you still don’t have any conversation topics save for sword maintenance?”

Michael lets out a long huff. “No, because any exposure to you is like a pollution. I hear you speak and feel the need to wash myself. I see you stand opposite me and wish to apologize to the earth for letting you tread on it.”

“Harsh,” the arch-fiend says unaffectedly, glancing at his fingernails. “But almost witty, by your standards. I congratulate you.”

“You’re aiming to delay me with your idle prattle, Satan, so that your wound may heal.” 

“Guilty as charged,” the devil laughs. It’s true; the gash in his side is already beginning to close. The flow of ichor has slowed to a trickle. 

Michael finds his gaze lingering on that wound. It just so happens to be in the exact same place that Michael struck before, in that first war. He can see the Apostate as he was then, in his vainglorious armor, hear his screech of pain mingled with fury and utter shock… the first time any angel ever struck another. It’s like he’s back there, amidst the ruination of heaven, of all that once was pure, amidst the stench of smoke and fire and ichor, the bodies of Fallen and Faithful alike strewn about the battlefield like cosmic playthings, cast aside when…

“Michael?”

He blinks. He’s back in the present and staring into the widened eyes of Lucifer.

“Mika’il, you’ve frozen and you’re staring at nothing. Is this some new form of communion that I cannot understand?”

Michael forces a breath out. He grips the hilt of his sword so tight his knuckles whiten. “Do not look at me in that way.”

“…Alright.” The devil backs away, spreading his wings. “I will be off, then, since you seem to be going through something.” 

It is an absurd gesture, nonsensical. The fiend should have seized Michael’s moment of weakness and dealt a fatal blow. But he is leaving. This is not the Adversary Michael has come to expect, unparalleled in his ferocity and wrath and ruthlessness. This _is his brother–_

“Uriel still weeps for you,” he blurts out. He does not know why this is the thing he says. But say it he does, because he has to say something, because he cannot let the moment pass uncommented, cannot allow his brother to turn back into the devil.

Lucifer shrugs. “Poor dear, but what am I to do?”

“You should not have treated him the way you did when he ventured into your dungeon. What you said to him… an act of war, really? Any angel coming down there?”

“What was he thinking to try?” Lucifer reinforces his grip around his spear. “It is my family down there. I expect you of all people to understand the need to protect those I was charged to.”

And Michael does understand, doesn’t he? Every moment he fights, every demon he smites, every breath he draws is for the other archangels. It flips something in him inside-out that the Adversary, the entity diluting everything he touches, should share that same motivation, something that Michael always considered holy. For a moment he wavers, struggling to dredge that hatred for Lucifer back up, that hatred that drives him. 

_He’s trying his wiles on me_ , he thinks. _Tempter, serpent, father of lies!_

“But war, really?” he asks. “You must know that in open confrontation, you can prevail against us now no more than you could then.”

Satan shrugs once more. “Perhaps so. But I imagine we could make you bleed before the end regardless. No one goes to war with the devil without regretting it at least a little.”

Michael’s mouth tastes bitter. A wave of renewed disgust wells up in him. That brief moment of… something that he dreads to even name as hope extinguishes now. “The only regret we shall feel will be in seeing one we once called brother slaughtered like a sacrifice upon the altar of our Lord.”

Satan graces him with a pale smile. “Regret nonetheless,” he says, and Michael will never understand this dreadful creature, and, “Regret enough for me.”

 


	4. Raphael

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this one's set in modern times and zanier. the devil: now coming to a bar near you! he will probably puke on you and cry about his life. then he will try and get you into bed.  
> raphael is every doctor character working a triple shift: the father of them all

_Lucifer, their brother, used to be the most dignified of the archangels, the most regal, as befitting an older sibling. Sometimes, perhaps, verging on aloof. Sometimes, Raphael or Gabriel have had to lovingly knock him down a peg, but they had always been filled with respect and admiration for their brother’s unmatched brilliance, that dwelt among the stars._

A little over two-thousand years have passed since the birth of the Anointed Son, and Raphael has kept himself busy. His work is by definition infinite: someone or something is always getting hurt and subsequently in need of healing. Out of the archangels, these days, he is perhaps the most versed in the ways of the world. Accompanying humanity through all it has been through lately will do that to a body. He lives by a tenet of wisdom that he picked up somewhere along the mud and blood and debris and general awfulness of two world wars: _no one messes with the medic._

It is late at night, and he has just now finished working some miracles at a children’s hospital. He wants to get home to the Heavens immediately and retire for the night (even angels require some amount of rest) when his finely tuned senses pick up on some aural disturbance further downtown. Something there is tainting an impressive number of souls at a rapid speed, and Raphael might as well go and find out what it is. Usually he keeps out of disputes with demons, he happily cedes that territory to Michael, but Michael isn’t here.

It is a warm summer night. Nobody looks at him askance for being out here, carefully circling a couple of dive bars looking for his disturbance. After a few minutes of attempting to pinpoint the source, a door is shoved open almost in his face, he catches a few snatches of slurred conversation, _“-and fuck you for that, not allowed to smoke in here, world’s going to the dogs i swear-”_ followed by a line of ancient Enochian that would make Raphael’s blood run cold were it not so badly mangled, someone stumbles into him and _oh_. He has a sudden armful of Satan.

“Watch where you’re going, you fucking… oh, hi, Raphy,” says the devil.

“Brother.” Raphael leans back because Lucifer is breathing right onto his face, and his breath is threatening to get the angel secondhand drunk. “You just said you’d curse someone’s shoelaces for three generations.”

“Enochian’s a bitch.” Lucifer’s swaying. Heavily. “I’m out of practice. Oh, and very drunk.”

“I can see that. What gives?” Without even noticing it, Raphael has switched into his doctor voice.

“What _gives?”_ Lucifer laughs. “Raphy, I’ve had a number of Four Lokos and some colorful pills that someone slipped into my drink. I have no _idea_ what i came here for.”

Raphael grasps the devil by the shoulders. “How are you even standing up right now?” _That angelic constitution_ , he answers his own question. Humanity has been inventive with the substances across the millennia, but none has been invented so far that had any long-term effect on the metabolism of an angel or demon. Raphael reckons there are some very regretful mortals back at that bar having attempted to drink his brother under the table. Yet still, he’s clearly in a state. “How much is _a number_ anyway?”

Lucifer blinks, attempting to focus on Raphael’s face. “Hmmm... bleventeen. No, that’s not a word. Um. Hey, do you want to hear an interesting fact about demons?”

Raphael clicks his tongue. The Fallen and their excesses… “Not precisely. And do please pull your skirt down, I can almost see your business.”

Angels (or demons) have never felt the need for gendered clothing. Michael likes a nice kilt. Uriel has a favorite poodle skirt. But Raphael opines that no one needs to cover themselves in a whole Macy’s store’s worth of tacky pentagram-themed jewelry like Lucifer is doing right now, and that skirt has careened over the line between provocative and cheap a long time ago, and that lipstick shade is faintly nauseating, and God did not give them immaculate corporations for them to punch holes in them and then stick little gold rings in the holes. But there’s no arguing taste with the devil, he supposes.

“You know, that fun fact about demons…” Lucifer swallows heavily. “Demons, you know, are _worldlier_ than angels.”

Well. His brother has sunk almost impossibly low, but Raphael still recognizes his ancient need to clothe simple statements in pompously obfuscating phrasing, especially as a way to express something embarrassing. “Is that your way to warn me that you’re going to throw up on me?”

The devil covers his mouth delicately with one hand. His acrylic nails are little works of art. “Yes.”

Raphael accepts his fate. Countless nights in countless urgent care units have done away with any squeamishness he might have once possessed towards that sort of thing. “Hold on.”

He spends a minor miracle to switch their location to the men’s room of the bar (it seems the vaguely appropriate gender choice for right now), and a minute later finds himself holding the devil’s hair up as he listens to him retch.

Feeling a bit like a emergency care professional on the tail end of a 36-hour-shift (which in a way he very much is) Raphael simply sinks to the floor and lets exhaustion take over. It drifts like pink fog through his mind and he barely notices how on his brother’s side of things, varied gagging noises have turned into words.

“…and they’ve all been asking me what i’m in drag for,” Lucifer is saying. “That’s so stupid. I’m not one gender dressing up as another. I'm an occult spirit.”

“Humans draw their conclusions,” Raphael mutters absentmindedly, rubbing at his eyes.

Lucifer, having spent the last quarter of an hour hunched over a toilet seat, rocks back on his heels (they’re six inches high. they sparkle) and wipes his mouth. “Gender is this construct for humans,” he slurs, gesturing expansively, “but not even they ended up liking it. Why did god want to do base two for them anyway? Seems dumb if you ask me.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s blasphemous.” Raphael sighs. In truth, the lines between what is and isn’t blasphemy have become increasingly blurred of late, and Father rarely gives them any hints anymore. Raphael is tired. Not just of the confusion, but in general. All his time is spent fixing up humans as well as angels, attempting to cheer up his brothers, and he wants to go and curl his wings around himself and have a nice, long nap. He’s had a long day at that hospital and didn’t ask to be volunteered to keep the devil company throughout his bender. But when he sees someone in need, he helps. Yes, demons too. No one has ever said anything about it, out of fear that if they protest too loudly against whatever Raphael is doing, the next time they find themselves in need of healing, Raphael will not be there. _No one messes with the medic._

“I live to blaspheme.” Lucifer snaps his purse open and pulls out a humongous bottle of margarita mix. Raphael wastes no breath on asking how that physically fit in there - physics had nothing to do with it.

“Don’t you think - give me that - don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

“Nu-uh.” Lucifer dodges his reaching hand. “I’m still conscious, aren’t i?”

“You’re a mess, Lucy.” Even he won’t break the taboo surrounding Lucifer’s name, but he figures abbreviations are well within his rights.

“Tell me about it.” Taking a slug from the garishly labeled bottle, Lucifer attempts to get back up, only to abandon the effort when it proves impossible. 

“We should get you home,” Raphael decides. He won’t enter Hell himself, but… “Give me your phone. I’m calling Beelzebub.”

“You will do no such thing.” Lucifer scoots out of Raphael’s reach, his wings coming out to balance him. “Yeah, i’ll be sick again.”

“Did you two argue?” Raphael asks over the sound of his regal elder sibling, the Morningstar, seal of perfection, noisily throwing up a second time. “Trouble in… well, certainly not paradise?”

Lucifer shakes his head. “He just… he worries so much.” 

“As does anyone spending any amount of time with you. Lord, your wings look terrible. When was the last time you preened?”

“Kinda been a while…” Lucifer sounds wretched by now. “It’s all just hopeless, ash gets everywhere, they just are like this now.”

“Stay right there.” Mentally postponing his nap for another few hours or so, Raphael snaps his fingers and manifests a preening brush. “Here, i’ll give you a hand.”

It’s something they used to do together frequently, as brothers. Grooming their wings together is an intimate activity, for angels. Raphael figures demons are no different. Who, he wonders, can the king of Hell really turn to for such innocent intimacies?

Before long, the floor in their dingy cubicle is covered in handfuls of moulted, ash-gray feathers. Lucifer is quiet, seeming to drift in and out of semi-consciousness. Raphael starts humming under his breath, an old Enochian lullaby the Father used to sing to them back in the better years, Lucifer joining in after a while as outside, humans are continuing to sin the night away. Raphael interrupts himself when he takes note of how his fallen brother’s shoulders have begun to hitch and puts a hand on his back, into the space between the shoulderblades where the wings sprout. The devil has his pride, even now, so Raphael doesn’t comment, just draws some soothing circles, shushing and muttering inanities under his breath.

“I know. I know. It’s okay. Shhh…”

“Wanna go home,” Lucifer whines.

“Well, there is always the possibility of…”

“I mean hell, idiot.”

Raphael lets out one more long sigh. His limbs are getting cramped from sitting on the floor. “Can i call Beelzebub now?”

For a moment, the impossible happens: Lucifer stops resisting.

The lord of the flies does end up joining them, giving Raphael a nod and a tight-lipped grimace that might be a smile as he gathers his prince up in his arms. “Well, look at you, _helel_ ,” he says. “What have we gotten ourselves into this time?”

Lucifer buries his face in the lesser demon’s shoulder. “‘ve you,” he says, somewhat muffled.

The grimace lightens into something genuine. “As i you.”

Raphael shrugs to himself. After six millennia in the medical profession, the fact that demons love each other can’t faze him anymore. Nothing can. He has seen smallpox, plague, polio, apparently smallpox again because some folks have founded what they call an anti-vaxx community, people turning up at the ER with papa smurf dolls lodged up their b-holes, and love between demons. His life just keeps handing him little revelations like that.

He makes sure they both get back to Hell safely, then he goes home, sleeps some, wakes up the next morning, rolls up his sleeves and begins his work anew. Someone out there always needs a healer.


	5. Epilogue: Lucifer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> EPILOGUE TIME! the fifth archangel we don't speak about should get to give his own take on himself!

Lucifer (brother to some, devil to all) disentangles himself from the pile of demons that somehow ended up in his bed last night. As he saunters to the window, yawning and attempting to reach back and scratch that tricky spot at the base of his right wing, he feels a song leap to his tongue, ancient and half-forgotten. He hums a few notes until he realizes what it is: the morning praises to the Lord that he once learned millennia ago and that they’re probably still singing in Heaven to this day, because Heaven is a place where nothing ever changes.

Lucifer shakes his head in annoyance at himself, wishing he could make himself forget these remnants more thoroughly. All they do is ache, now. They knock about in the empty space lodged somewhere beneath his sternum where his grace once sat, and resonate with nothing. Thinking about that space at all feels like probing an aching tooth.

_Holy, holy, holy…_

It’s migraine-inducing.

The view from the window is the same as always. Lucifer has come to appreciate Hell, especially all the effort they’ve made to turn a once barren waste into something habitable. It’s his home, he would defend it against anyone. but sometimes, well… the landscape is still mostly darkness and rocks and flames. The sun does not rise here - Lucifer has no idea what time it actually is on earth. No stars here either - and that is perhaps the worst, that he can’t look out of his bedroom window and see the morningstar anymore. Plus the sulphurous fumes make him lightheaded, doing nothing for his migraine. The whole thing calls for a scene change, so he manifests what he reckons constitutes Earth-appropriate clothing right onto his form, spreads his wings and sets off.

Where Hell is glum, Earth is bright. The sun is out where he comes up, obscured only partially by a barely-there haze of clouds. He doesn’t actually hate the sun, like Milton wrote, but his eyes did get light-sensitive after so much time spent underground. (So many humans have written about him. He’s vain, and fully leaning into that, so he keeps up with them, if only to laugh at all the misinterpretations. But it is growing increasingly into a lens to view himself through, what the humans write. What is accurate? What did they get wrong? Which things from the Rolling Stones song did he actually do, and which would simply have been awesome to have done?)

Humans, Lucifer thinks, not for the first time, as he settles on a roof and rests his wings after flying some loops and bothering some birds. They’re oddly drawn to him, aren’t they, humans? As he is to them. Ah, well, he has to admit that dad outdid himself with humanity. For better or worse, what a wealth of potential.

He remembers the first time he saw humans, all the way back in Eden. How he’d been struck dumb by the overpowering impulse to protect these beings, to befriend them, love them, despite himself, despite his mission to corrupt them, maybe even kill them… well, thankfully (thanks to whom?) it hadn’t come to that. No, no, all he’d done was prise them away from the father’s domineering hands and release them out into the world, turning them from pampered, cute little pets into Earth’s true rulers. ~~Or whatever helps him sleep at night.~~

In reality, Lucifer reckons, everything he did back then was probably part of the plan. Why would a being powerful enough to create a world within six days bear some angel to rebel? Why would said all-powerful being let a war break out among his subordinates, a war that cost more than a third of the host? Why does god allow the rebel angels to exist to this day? Only, it must seem, because he wanted a rebel faction. He wanted the devil, to give humanity a choice, a way to be good and do good willfully, deliberately, with open eyes. And who to pick for the antagonist job but his eldest archangel, one who almost (never quite!) reaches his heights of power? He’s out here doing this thankless job so that no one else has to, and though he can never tell his brothers that, he takes a quiet pride in it.

It’s almost a reason worth falling for. 

And so they’re all deceived, the rebels, the faithful, Lucifer himself. Does this set him apart from the faithful in terms of having free will, or does it make him nothing but a slightly more elaborate puppet? Lucifer sighs and lights himself a cigarette. He won’t find out today. He probably won’t find out at all. And really, even thinking about all this for too long puts him in need of a drink or ten, or maybe some of these nice substances that humans came up with that you can take intravenously and that cause some nice moments of blissful braindeadness even in a demon.

A slightly painful prickling sensation is making itself known where the palms of his hands rest on the tiles of the roof. What is this, some kind of church he’s sitting on? Lucifer peeks downwards and determines that yes, it is a church indeed. Tipping his head back to roll his eyes to the high Heavens, he skims his hands across the surface underneath him, relishing the slight burn. What nourished him once is hurting him now.

He blinks in consternation when, further up the roof, some kind of little maintenance door opens and a human pops out like some sort of jack-in-the-box. Judging by his habit, the priest here. “Sir?” he asks. “Or madam, um...? That is, no one should be up here… _oh.”_

Lucifer ruffles his wings, that he of course forgot to tuck in. Well, looks like this guy is up for some revelations of the wrong kind. How do his brothers deal with these occurrences? Wasn’t there something you say? Ah yes… “Uh… fear not?”

He watches as the priest (middle-aged, balding, on the stout side, wholly unremarkable) goes through the kind of face journey he’s gotten used to over the millennia. “AN ANGEL… HOLY SHIT… oh, no, wait… something’s wrong with it.”

“Sorry about all this,” Lucifer says, gesturing apologetically with the still-lit cigarette in his hand. “Maybe someday you’ll have a real angel experience.”

The priest takes a deep breath. “This seems like the next best thing,” he says good-naturedly, resting his hands on his hips. Lucifer has to do a double take.

Humans! Always good for a surprise.

“So, you’re one of the damned crew, eh?” the man asks. “Honestly, i didn’t even… quite believe you lot were real.”

Lucifer rests his head on his crossed arms. “The best trick the devil ever pulled, and so on and so forth.” He smiles lazily. To many modern humans these days, he’s little more than a bogeyman. He’s not nearly as weirded out by those as he is by the ones that are trying and worshipping him lately. That’s a whole other thing he does empathically not know how to deal with. (Is he supposed to answer prayers? God doesn't do that, does he? Is he supposed to actually turn up at summonings? Ugh.)

To his considerable surprise, the priest comes over and sits with him, accompanied by a “Do you mind?” 

“i don’t _mind_ ,” Lucifer says. “But you’re not… shrieking and trying to banish me. What’s up with that, padre?” Saying _father_ would just be plain weird.

“Well,” the priest says, shifting a little in an attempt to get comfortable on the hard tiles, “I’m of the opinion that… you know, Mark Twain once wrote–”

“I know what Twain wrote.” Lucifer gives the man a scowl. “I… the sentiment honors you, I guess, but I don’t love being pitied.”

The priest gives him a scrutinizing sideways glance. The fallen angel has more than a head on him. “You… you really are him, huh?” There’s another lengthy, calming intake of breath. “The… the big one. Old scratch. The dragon himself. The prince of–”

“Please! I prefer Lucifer.”

The priest shrugs. “You do look like a Lucifer to me,” he says. “You know, not really an _Old Nick_ type of face. I mean to say… you look like one would picture an angel.”

Lucifer laughs, flicking his spent cigarette away. “To you, maybe.” In truth, while his face and body haven’t changed that drastically since the fall, his aura very much has. To any real angel, the difference from before would be glaringly obvious, but humans apparently lack that sense.

It certainly seems obvious enough to his brothers. He misses them when absent, but loathes meeting them these days because, well, the sight of Gabriel doing his best to hide his sadness, or Raphael’s deeply worried eyes, or Uriel getting all weepy or Michael somehow deluding himself into pretending that ‘the devil’ and ‘his brother’ are two different people and that vanquishing one will bring back the other… 

Yet another thing that doesn’t bear thinking about.

“I need a drink,” Lucifer concludes, turning back towards the priest. “You probably have communion wine or something downstairs?”

“Oh, come on,” says the priest with a startled laugh. “Could you even drink that?”

“Not a problem.” It is - he’s tried before - likely to do as much damage to him as any normal alcohol to a human. The hangovers are absolutely wicked, but that is a problem for tomorrow’s devil. “I’ll tell you what, padre. How about a bargain?” Deals with humans have been one amusing way to while away the time, for Lucifer. Once, some kid beat him in a fiddle playing contest and called him a son of a bitch, thus indirectly insulting the Almighty. Lucifer had almost fallen over backwards laughing about it.

“Excuse me?” the priest asks, half indignant, but there’s mirth there. 

“Nothing involving souls,” Lucifer clarifies. “No official deals. Just, you go get the goods and I’ll, uh, fucking… hey, you could ask me stuff. About my brothers, about Heaven, god, anything. First-hand account from someone who was there.”

“But biased, I’d imagine.” The priest shakes his head.

Well, he probably has a point there. “Then a song,” Lucifer suggests. “Like they sing in Heaven. Have you ever heard Enochian sung?”

“Can’t say I've heard it spoken,” the priest says. It’s a privilege that not many humans get to experience.

So Lucifer clears his throat, and he finally lets that damned melody that has been haunting him all day escape. Seated on the roof of a church, the devil, just this once and just because it’s for a deal, sings of Heaven. Of the sun coming up in the morning, of angels going out and lovingly picking beauteous blossoms off of dew-damp lawns in Heaven, of joining them into fragrant bouquets to adorn the throne of their all-loving Father. He sings of the pure, innocent, all-encompassing love that rests in every angel’s breast, the joyful security of knowing that this love is beyond reciprocated by their glorious Father, who created everything just so to best please his beloved children, who makes the sun come up in the morning. Lucifer still has one of the best voices ever heard in Heaven. He pulls it off fairly well, even after so many years of no practice.

“And it’s all a miserable farce,” he closes in English, licking his dry lips. He’d really like a drink now.

“What was it?” breathes the priest. He looks awed. “I mean, what was it _about?”_

“Oh, Heaven and god and flowers and shit.” Lucifer shrugs.

“What is it like?” the priest asks. “Having… all that… and then not having it anymore, that is, being shut off from…” He looks at his hands folded in his lap, seeming almost abashed. “What does it feel like being the devil, I guess is what I'm asking.”

“Huh.” There are many answers to that question. What does it feel like being the devil? Like a six-thousand-year hangover. Like wings weighed down by ash and an eternal headache. Like an emptiness in his chest that nothing can ever fill. Like nightmares of the war on Heaven every time he closes his eyes, like millennia of doubting his every decision. Like seeing his siblings, whom he loved, look upon him in misery and hatred. Like knowing he damned so many people, ruining a good thing for all of them. Like the freedom that the emptiness brings, the joy and trepidation that go hand in hand with making every life choice by himself for himself. Like his big, loud, warm demon family enclosing around him. Like Beelzebub’s kisses, heavy with a love no longer innocent and founded in the lord but selfish and profane and for him, only for him. Like learning new exciting things, committing new exciting sins, meeting new exciting people. Like dressing the way he wants, proclaiming his feelings loudly, with no fear of censure or reproach. Like the euphoria there can be in a really good party. Like the fierce pride of looking unto Hell and knowing that he built something here himself, by his own hands, where there used to be nothing.

“It’s okay,” Lucifer says. “Sometimes it’s pretty bad, but… I’m myself. I’m free.”


End file.
